1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to establishing a connection to an Access Point (AP). More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for connecting to an AP among first and second APs that have different connection schemes.
2. Description of the Related Art
With advancements in communication technologies, recent portable terminals (e.g., smartphones) are now provided with Bada®, Tizen®, iOS®, Android, and other advanced operating systems. With the advanced features and conveniences provided by these operating systems, portable terminals are increasingly popular.
An important aspect of such operating systems is the provision of advanced functions and utilities. To ensure adequate use of the advanced functions and utilities, it is important to provide sufficient data communication.
For example, to efficiently use functions of email, Internet browsing, Kakao Talk®, Facebook®, Twitter®, and the like, data communication must be enabled. In other words, data communication is essential for the portable terminals, such as smartphones, to be conveniently used.
Data communication of the portable terminal is performed through a wireless transceiver by communicating with a base station or through a short-range communication module, e.g., a Wireless Fidelity (WI-FI) module by connecting to an Access Point (AP).
Data communication using a wireless transceiver has some disadvantages, such as cost burden of the data communication, quick exhaustion of a battery of the portable terminal, etc.
On the contrary, data communication via an AP connection has many advantages in that there are a growing number of public APs available for free, that installation of private APs (e.g., at home or in offices) is easy, and that such data communication via the AP connection consumes less battery power. Thus, a user of a portable terminal tends to prefer data communication via an AP connection as opposed to data communication using the wireless transceiver.
In the method of connecting to an AP of the related art, once a particular AP, such as a hotspot (e.g., a public AP) or a private AP (e.g., an AP at the user's home) is completed, information that is required to connect to the AP, e.g., authentication information, is stored in the portable terminal, which is later used for an automatic connection to the AP. Hence, the user is not inconvenienced by needing to input the information each time an AP connection is desired.
On the other hand, the method of the related art requires a complicated procedure to connect to a new AP to which the user has never been connected by e.g., selecting the AP and inputting authentication information for the AP. Furthermore, the method of the related art is relatively vulnerable to security and has little coverage.
Hotspot 2.0, a scheme of connecting to an AP, has been proposed to supplement the foregoing AP connecting method of the related art. Since Hotspot 2.0 supports WI-FI roaming (e.g., roaming between APs and roaming between an AP and a base station), even if the portable terminal roams, the portable terminal is still able to perform data communication without AP disconnection.
For example, in case Korea's telecommunication company, KT Corp. and America's telecommunication company, AT&T agreed on the WI-FI roaming, it is possible for a user to conveniently use APs provided by KT Corp. in Korea and APs provided by AT&T in the USA without the need for separate authentication.
On the other hand, although Hotspot 2.0 has been proposed, the number of APs that support Hotspot 2.0 still remains low. Also, even if the number of APs that support Hotspot 2.0 increases, there are still many legacy APs that do not support Hotspot 2.0.
Thus, because there is a mix of APs that do and do not support Hotspot 2.0, a technique of more conveniently connecting to an AP that is more favorable to the user is desirable.
The above information is presented as background information only to assist with an understanding of the present disclosure. No determination has been made, and no assertion is made, as to whether any of the above might be applicable as prior art with regard to the present invention.